


Maybe it will all come back to me

by dfotw



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Dreams and Nightmares, Hallucinations, M/M, Mindfuck, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-19 22:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14247498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dfotw/pseuds/dfotw
Summary: Bucky wakes up.It's 1943. It's 1991. It's 2018.It's Austria. It's New York. It's Wakanda.It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.Time stretches, then compresses, then breaks like an old rubber band put under too much stress.





	Maybe it will all come back to me

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, my gratitude to Yunhaiiro for endless inspiration, encouragement, and MCU knowledge. I definitely couldn't have done this without you, buddy!
> 
> (also, go read Yun's delightful pre-war domestic Stucky, which is pretty much how I picture their lives going before all this: [Brooklyn, Before](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14296272/chapters/32981010))
> 
> Title from The Decemberists' "January Hymn".
> 
> As a reader, I invite you to feel free to choose which reality/timeline is real, if any.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts.

“Er ist wach,” a voice says.

Bucky opens his eyes and is blinded by a light. He opens his mouth and a cloth is pressed against his face. Helpless, his eyes slid shut again.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts. It always does.

Undisclosed location, Kitzbühel Alps, Austria, 1943? The objective is survival, with escape a distant second.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

But no, the air is warm, heavy with humidity. Insects chirrup and buzz in the distance. He’s not strapped to a table.

Bucky opens his eyes. The roof over his head is thatched, rough palm leaves twisted together.

Cuicuina, Nicaragua, 1980? The objective is the assassination of Edén Pastora and a small Contra group.

But no, there’s an empty space to his left and no weapons in sight.

Undisclosed location, Wakanda, 2018? The objective is, in Princess Shuri’s words, to “recover, relax, and stop frowning, I don’t do plastic surgery”.

This time the memory doesn’t twist and stretch and dissolve under the pressure of a hundred little inconsistencies in his surroundings. Bucky holds onto it until reality solidifies around him, and then he gets up.

Wakanda, 2018, he repeats as he struggles to dress one-handed. Steve is fine. The world is… not any of Bucky’s business, right now. He just needs to recover. That’s all.

He eats whatever the lady from the hut next door brings him, and takes the bowls back to her with a meek ‘enkosi’. He exercises (jogging around the lake, sit-ups, push-ups on his good arm), and tries not to grimace at the children who watch his every step. A little boy brings him a bottle of water at mid-morning.

“Enkosi,” Bucky says, as gently as he can. There are two hundred and seven substances that could pass unnoticed in clear water. There are over four hundred ways Bucky could incapacitate or kill the boy.

“Wamkelekile,” the kid replies with a smile, and runs away giggling.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts. His chest is heaving and he is shivering.

_Calm down, calm down, you’ll only call attention to yourself. Breathe slowly. Pretend to be asleep still. Assess your surroundings. Can you move? No. Not good._

HYDRA lab, Kitzbühel Alps, 1943?

HYDRA lab, Siberia, undisclosed year?

Royal Palace of Wakanda lab, Wakanda, 2017?

Bucky wants to open his eyes. He doesn’t.

_Are you vertical or horizontal? The surgery tables in Austria were horizontal. The cryogenic freezers in Siberia and Wakanda were vertical. Which is it?_

If Bucky remembers Wakanda, he can’t be in Austria, or Siberia. Time is linear. Time has to be linear.

Bucky opens his eyes. It’s dark. It’s cold. His head spins.

This isn’t Wakanda.

His left side screams in agony when he tries to move.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” he says. It doesn’t help. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

It’s dark and it hurts. Bucky closes his eyes.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts where he’s got his right foot tangled in the sheets. He’s thirsty and his shoulders ache and he can feel a bruise forming on his cheekbone.

If he doesn’t open his eyes, he won’t have to see the trouble he’s in.

He needs to stop letting Steve get him into fights. Better yet, he needs to stop letting Steve get into fights he needs Bucky’s help to finish.

His bed has never been this uncomfortable. Wait, is this his bed? If he’s ended up in the lock-up after whatever happened last night, his sister is never going to let him live it down.

Muted voices in the distance. Bucky frowns, his eyes still closed. Military voices.

He sits up, heart pounding. He’s in Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, he’s in training, and shit, is he late?

A blow to his stomach throws him back on the bed. Even breathing hurts now. Bucky manages to let out a creaky cough before they hit him again. He wants to throw a kick, but his foot is still tangled in the sheets (or is that a restraint?), and he wants to throw a punch, but he can’t feel his arm.

Another blow. Another, this one to the face. His blood is roaring in his ears, and Bucky can’t make out what his attackers are saying. Maybe it’s not even English. Jesus, are the Nazis invading the States?

One last attempt to defend himself, and then something is pressed to his face and Bucky is out like a light.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts, not just the space where his arm used to be, but his head.

Bucky opens his eyes slowly, unsure as always of where he’ll be.

Thatched roof, insects whirring, children laughing outside.

Wakanda, 2018.

Bucky stays in bed until he can calm his breathing, then begins the slow process of making himself presentable.

He usually avoids looking at himself in the mirror, but he needs to assess whether his stubble has progressed far enough towards a beard that he needs to risk shaving before the nice lady who makes his meals begins tutting at him when she sees him. He pauses, hand on his chin, when he realises that a deep bruise is blooming on his cheekbone.

He’s in Wakanda. He’s safe. He’s safe, so why is there a bruise on his face he doesn’t remember getting?

Bucky presses gingerly on it, and it obediently flashes a burst of pain. It’s real, not a streak of dust or a trick of the light.

What happened?

A quick look around his hut reveals that everything is undisturbed. Or is it? Besides the tangled mess of the bed (Bucky either sleeps as still as the dead or tosses and turns like a devil all night, there is no in-between), were those clothes just thrown on the floor last night? Wasn’t that bottle of water on the nightstand full?

Bucky paces around the hut, watching and cataloguing differences.

“Wakanda, 2018,” he tells himself, but sometimes, “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” comes out instead.

The light changes inside the hut. Is it a passing cloud in the usually clear Wakandan sky, or is something happening *outside* that Bucky’s mind translates as a shadow?

Bucky crouches in the darkest corner of the hut, presses his back against the wall, and breathes. Is he awake?

A loud beep startles him. The mobile phone on the nightstand shows Princess Shuri’s face, but Bucky hesitates before answering.

“Barnes!” says her cheerful voice. “White Wolf, do you copy?”

Bucky has to swallow twice to get his voice to work. He doesn’t want to drink the water on his nightstand, doesn’t trust it.

“I’m here.”

“You ok?” Shuri asks, forthright as always.

Bucky’s first instinct is to say ‘yes’. Don’t look vulnerable, a voice says in his head, and the voice might just be his own. But saying ‘no’ might get him more information, and Bucky needs to know where he stands.

The pause while he considers his options is enough for Shuri, who Bucky has learnt is not characterised for her patience.

“You had… a nightmare last night,” she says, and Bucky takes note of the pause and of the unusual gentleness of her voice. “Anathi heard you shouting, but she couldn’t wake you up. She had to get her husband and her nephew Lwazi to hold you down, they were afraid you’d hurt yourself.”

An explanation, then, for the clothes and the water and the tangled sheets. Bucky raises his hand and presses down on the bruise again.

“I see,” he rasps, when the silence lengthens enough that he realises Shuri is waiting for a response. What else should he say? ‘Sorry’? ‘Thank you’?

“I’m trying to finish some stuff for my brother, but Doctor Ndlambe can go by today if you need her.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Bucky doesn’t feel steady enough to stand up, let alone have a therapy session. “Just tired. Hungry, too.”

“Well, go eat something, white boy!” Shuri says with a laugh. “Don’t go undoing all my hard work just to go on a diet.”

Bucky mutters his way through their goodbyes, then stands up.

He had a nightmare. It’s fine. Doctor Ndlambe would tell him nightmares are normal. He had a nightmare, and that explains everything.

It’s a little cloudy outside when Bucky goes to knock on Anathi’s door. Her eyes are worried when she looks at him, and she raises her hand to lightly brush against Bucky’s cheekbone. He thinks he disguises his flinch well enough.

“Your husband,” he says, while she piles food on his bowls. “Your nephew…”

“Out working with the rhinos,” Anathi says. “More ukodo, yes?”

“Yes, thank you, but I mean…” Bucky feels his fist clenching, forces himself to stretch his fingers one by one. “Did I hurt anyone last night?”

Anathi doesn’t answer for a moment, apparently busy arranging a piece of yam just so on the bowl. Bucky feels he might be sick.

“Lwazi won’t be climbing any trees for a while,” she says, and her lips twitch in a smile. “He has a lot more respect for white men now, too.”

“I’m sorry. Ndicela uxolo.”

“It’s alright. You were asleep, and he’s young and will be fine in a few days. No harm done.” Anathi presses the tray with his breakfast into Bucky’s hand. “Now go eat. Ukonwabele ukutya kwakho.”

“Enkosi,” Bucky mutters, and beats a hasty retreat to his own hut.

Bucky eats his breakfast. Bucky returns the empty bowls. Bucky exercises, then showers, then eats again. Bucky would usually take a nap, but today he doesn’t. Bucky goes for a walk. Bucky goes back to the village. Bucky paces around until it gets dark, eats again, apologises again, this time to Anathi’s husband in person (Lwazi doesn’t approach, and watches Bucky from the distance, between a group of young men, but like Anathi said he seems more impressed than angry, and is only limping a little bit).

Bucky goes back to his hut and stares at his bed. Doctor Ndlambe would say that he should sleep, that proper rest and good routines are both good for his soul. Colonel Karpov would just flick a switch.

Bucky makes himself get into bed and close his eyes.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It goddamn hurts, that’s what it does. The air is bitingly cold, and the dirty concrete ceiling above him offers no more comfort than the steel table to which he’s strapped to does. He doesn’t look to his left, where his arm is hooked to more tubes and wires than a tank.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” he says, even though he’s alone. It helps to remember who is, where he is.

It’s 1942, he’s in some godforsaken Nazi lab being used as a guinea pig, but he’s Bucky Barnes and he’s not said a word other than his name and ID number.

His breath rises in white plumes from his mouth. It’s winter, and for a moment Bucky allows himself the luxury of worrying about how Steve will be spending Christmas back in New York, and whether he’s taking good care of those awful colds he always gets when the weather turns bad and he doesn’t have enough money for a good coat.

But no, no matter what the pulps Bucky read when he was younger suggested, thinking of good things when you’re in bad situations doesn’t help. It might sound stupid, but he’s afraid that even thinking of Steve from this dismal place will somehow allow the horror to reach his friend all the way to his room in Brooklyn. And even if that’s just the stupid superstition of a guy sick with dehydration and fever, the reality is that sometimes the Nazi scum that come to poke and prod at him ask him questions, and sometimes Bucky is so out of it with pain and cold and whatever they’re injecting into him that he almost answers.

Better to think of something else. Better to think of ways to escape, other than dying and getting out of the way. Better to hope that Dum-Dum, Jones, Dernier and Montgomery are still alright, keeping their heads down and not making stupid mistakes while trying to sabotage the stuff they have them making in the factory below.

Bucky bites his lip until it splits and blood drips into his mouth. He doesn’t want to fall asleep again. Last time he dreamt he was back in Camp McCoy and someone was beating him up while he tried to get out of bed. He also gets dreams of falling asleep in some sort of freezer, but honestly the room they have him in is almost as cold as that, so he’s not surprised. Sometimes, almost as if to compensate, he dreams of a place that’s warm and sunny and where he can hear children laughing.

“Fucking focus, Barnes,” he snarls to himself, and when he clenches his fists his left arm screams in protest.

Jesus Christ, he hopes that whatever stuff they’re pumping into him doesn’t give him sepsis. He has nightmares of looking to his left and seeing nothing where his pincushion of an arm is now. He also hopes his ma didn’t take the telegram too hard, and that Father Callahan is feeding her some claptrap now about how the Germans treat their POWs nicely. For a moment his mind skitters to the thought of Steve hearing the news, going back to his place like he did after Mrs Roger’s funeral except that now he’s alone because Bucky had to go get himself drafted, shipped out, and captured.

Guilt rises up in his throat like bile. Bucky closes his eyes and tries to think of something else, anything else.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts. It’s cold. A light blinds him. There’s movement to his left.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” he whispers through a throat as raw as if he’d spent the last couple of days screaming for his life.

Bucky doesn’t remember screaming. He’s almost thankful for this.

“он очнулся,” a voice says.

That’s not German, Bucky thinks, before he hears a switch being flipped and a cold liquid being injected into his right arm. He falls asleep even before his eyes have finished closing.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts. The grimy concrete ceiling is familiar, and Bucky hates it.

It’s been a while since the scientists have come to poke and prod at him, or the guards have come to hose him down or tighten his restraints. Bucky is thankful for the reprieve, for the silence that, while it can’t quite soothe, at least doesn’t aggravate his aching head.

His train of thought quickly derails when the door creaks open. Speak of the devil, damn it.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” he says, and turns his head to see which doctor it is this time.

Fucking hell, he knew he shouldn’t have been thinking of Steve earlier.

“Bucky,” says the apparition, and he knows Steve better than anyone else in the world, so why is his head picturing him all wrong? “Oh my God.”

_Because this isn’t Steve, dumbass. What the hell would Steve be doing here?_

“Is that…?” Bucky asks, before he realises there’s no one to ask what’s real and what’s not, even less so his own aching brain.

“It’s me, it’s Steve,” says the man who is obviously not Steve as he helps Bucky sit up.

“Steve,” Bucky replies, and maybe if he says it enough times he can make himself believe it’s his best friend who is holding him up right now. “Steve.”

“I thought you were dead,” the man says, and at least the voice is right, even though obviously Steve wouldn’t think Bucky was dead because his ma would have told him about him being taken prisoner the moment she got the telegram.

“I thought you were smaller. What the hell happened to you?” Bucky asks, and he doesn’t know if he’s asking it to the apparition or to his own screwed up head.

“I joined the Army,” says not-Steve.

Bucky wants to laugh. What the fuck did they shoot him up with this time? They’ll be drafting grandmas before Steve makes it past a medical board to enlist.

They’re out in a corridor, Bucky stumbling along as best he can, before he notices that he’s been doing the one thing he knows he shouldn’t: talking.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” he mutters, and rests his forehead against a grimy wall for a moment while not-Steve checks to see if the next corridor is clear.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts. He’s gritting his teeth so hard his whole head hurts. In front of him, frosted glass.

Something beeps on the other side of the glass. There’s voices, then the beep quiets, and Bucky feels his eyes slid close.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts, but not-Steve won’t let him stop. Bucky sees horrible visions, men who tear off their faces to reveal the red muscles underneath, and he wonders if he died and went to Hell. His ma would be so disappointed to learn all those Sunday masses did nothing.

Whatever the place they’re in (lab? Factory? Demon-infested hell?) is, it’s about to blow. If it were up to him, Bucky would just drop in a quiet corner and let the explosion take him, but not-Steve is as much of a stubborn punk as the real one and keeps him moving.

“Go!” not-Steve bellows.

The real Steve can’t raise his voice like that without starting to cough immediately. But across the gap and the flames, the face of the guy who’s brought Bucky all this way almost looks like Steve, like stubborn, stupid, self-sacrificing Steve.

“Not without you!” Bucky tells him, because he’s never left a man behind, even a stranger that might be a figment of his drug-addled imagination or some sort of angel sent to guide him through purgatory.

The man with Steve’s face clears the flame-filled space in one jump, and that’s a tick on the ‘angel’ column. No human being can jump like that.

Being dead is a lot like being alive in that it hurts like the dickens, Bucky thinks before his eyes close against his will.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts, but it’s warm, and he doesn’t think he’s been warm since the war started.

Is he running a brain-frying fever, or did they finally turn up the heating in the fucking Nazi lab?

A knock. He sits up, unimpeded by any restraints. He’s in a sort of… hut? Wooden floors, adobe walls, he feels like he’s in a Tarzan movie set.

“Mr Barnes?” asks the black woman at the door. “Did you forget our appointment?”

What?

“What?”

The woman pauses for a moment.

“I’m Doctor Ndlambe,” she says, more slowly now. “Do you remember me?”

Bucky snorts.

“Right. No offence, ma’am, but we don’t have colored lady doctors where I’m from.”

He wants to be more cautious, but he’s pretty sure Nazis don’t have colored lady doctors either.

“What year is it, Mr Barnes?”

Interrogation, right. Focus, Barnes.

“I’m Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” he says, automatically. “Why don’t you tell me what year it is?”

“It’s 2017,” she says.

“Uh-huh. So I’m supposed to be a hundred years old, and I look like this…”

Bucky holds up his hands in demonstration, but trails off at what he sees, or better yet, doesn’t see. His stomach crumples when he looks at his left shoulder and sees a stump where his arm should be.

“I’ve had this nightmare before,” he manages to mutter before his vision goes gray.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts.

He’s passing in and out of consciousness while he walks, which he knows it’s not a good sign. He’s wearing only a tattered shirt high up in the Alps in winter, and he’s dreaming of warmth and sunlight. He’s clutching a rifle and following a man who says he’s Steve but can’t be.

The guys around them (Dum-Dum and Morita and Jones made it out alright, thank goodness, as did Dernier and Montgomery) keep talking about ‘Captain America’, so Bucky decides that’s what he’ll call him too. Captain America, with Steve’s face and voice, but not Steve’s body or posture. Captain America, who keeps turning his head to look at Bucky like he’s afraid he’ll disappear, unlike Steve who always waded into trouble without looking back because he knew with a bone-deep certainty that Bucky would follow, complaining all the way.

If this is what it’s like, being dead, it sucks.

They finally reach a military camp, and Bucky waves the medics on to go see the guys who are really hurt. He catches Captain America looking at him, and decides he owes the guy something for all he’s done. He might not be his Steve, his frail and angry and generous little package of trouble, but there’s something in the man’s eyes when he looks at Bucky that makes his chest hurt all the same.

“Hey! Let's hear it for Captain America,” he calls out, and both the former POWs and the men in the camp are happy to comply.

Captain America needs to go and get a medal from a senator or something, but he makes sure Bucky is in the hands of a medic before he leaves. The nurse tut-tuts at the puncture wounds on his left arm and at the bruises on his ribs, but there’s little they can do for him other than give him proper clothes and a hot meal.

Once Bucky is fed and clothed, lying on a cot in the tent he’s told he’ll be sharing with Captain America, he feels a little better disposed towards this strange reality. Even if he’s dead and this is an afterlife that has nothing to do with what Father Callahan thunders on about back home, at least Bucky is not in some lake of fire, right? And he’s out of that Nazi lab, which…

… which, now that he thinks about it, is a little suspicious. Bucky doesn’t move, tries to keep his breathing steady, but he can’t help the way he tenses up. Isn’t it odd, that just when he’s feverish and pumped full of drugs, he sees a gorgeous man with the face of his best friend who carries him through the unlikeliest rescue in the history of war?

Bucky frantically tries to think of what he’s said so far. Has he disclosed any sensitive information, mentioned anything he shouldn’t? At best he’s having an escapist dream, at worst this is some new and devilish way of getting him to talk. He needs to remain alert and focused and try to give away as little as he can.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and falls asleep before he can plan any further.

.

.

.

He wakes up.

It hurts.

He opens his mouth to state his name and ID number, but what comes out instead is "Я готов отвечать."

The asset is ready. The instructions are clear. Find, track, sanction, extract, return. No witnesses.

The asset doesn’t sleep during a mission. It is just wasted time. Find, track, sanction, extract, return.

December 1991, Long Island, New York. Visibility is low, but that hardly matters. Run the vehicle off the road. Finish target. Place back in vehicle. Finish witness. Disable security camera. Recover objective. Return to handler. Return to base.

Sleep.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts.

“You OK there, Bucky?” a familiar voice asks.

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky says immediately, because above the pain and the nausea and the bone-creaking terror he knows without a doubt he’s meant to reassure that voice.

“Bullshit.” A hand lands heavy on his shoulder and pulls him into a sitting position. “Breathe. You’re gonna throw up?”

Bucky shakes his head because he thinks that if he opens his mouth he just might, and he hates having to stay in a tent that smells like vomit. He doesn’t feel like going out in the frigid Alpine night to fetch a mop and a bucket either, if they even have one.

“Breathe, then.”

The hand remains steady and warm on his shoulder until Bucky’s insides stop trying to wriggle around.

“Steve?” he croaks out when he feels safe opening his mouth.

“… yeah. I’m here, Buck.”

“Fuck.”

“I’m not even going to ask if you’re OK again. Want some water?”

It’s cold and dark, but Steve’s voice is a beacon.

“No,” Bucky says, because he’s thirsty and his mouth tastes like something died in it, but he doesn’t want Steve to pull away.

“You’re shaking. Blanket?”

“We have blankets? I thought you gave them all to Morita when he caught that fever.”

A pause. Not good. Bucky looks up. Visibility is low, but that hardly matters. He can make out Steve’s face, shadows resolving into a furrowed brow. Shit, Bucky said something wrong. What was it? Blankets? Morita? Is Morita dead and Steve doesn’t know how to tell him?

“Bucky…” Steve pauses, then takes his hand away to reach for something.

A bottle of water. Not a canteen, but a plastic bottle. Bucky tries to reach for it, then realises he doesn’t have a left arm, only a metal stump with twisted edges.

Everything wobbles for a minute. Time stretches, then compresses, then breaks like an old rubber band put under too much stress.

“Ah,” Bucky forces himself to say. “We’re not in 1944 anymore, Toto.”

“Nope,” Steve agrees, doing an awful job of trying to sound unruffled.

“Sorry about that. Got my wires crossed for a minute.”

Steve doesn’t laugh at the joke. Bucky drinks the water, puts the cap back on the bottle with exaggerated care.

“Do you know what year it is?” Steve asks when Bucky’s done with the bottle.

Bucky wonders whether he should lie, but it’s Steve.

“Sort of? 2015 or thereabouts, judging by the fact that you’re here with me. You’re gonna have to give me a while if you want me to be more specific.”

“2016. We’re… on our way to Wakanda.”

Wakanda, Africa? For some reason Bucky thinks of warmth and children laughing, the taste of yam, air humid and heavy with the buzzing of insects. _Focus, Barnes._

“Do you remember T’Challa?” Steve insists. “Black Panther?”

Sometimes (alright, a lot of the time) Bucky wishes Steve was less stubborn. He also wishes he knew how to lie to Steve, if only to reassure him, but Steve has always known how to see right through him.

“I need a nap, my head is killing me,” Bucky says instead, and it’s not a lie. “Do we have time?”

He can see Steve wants to keep prodding at his memory, but then he sees him relent; always so soft and generous when Bucky is concerned, his Steve.

“We have time,” Steve says. “Sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts. The freezing air feels like it’s stabbing his lungs with every breath.

“You OK there, Bucky?” a familiar voice asks.

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky says immediately, before he remembers where and when he is, and that he really shouldn’t be taking Steve’s voice for granted.

A further reminder comes when the hand that lands on his shoulder is bigger and warmer than it has a right to be. Steve had (has!) big hands for such a little guy, but they’re thin and scarred at the knuckles and always stained with graphite or paint and colder than it’s healthy and as delicate as a bird’s fucking wings.

“Buck…”

The voice is the same, as is the low-key irritation.

“Look, this is weird for me too, alright? I don’t… I didn’t know it would be like this. And I tried writing to you, but obviously you didn’t get any of my letters. But it’s me.”

So, this tall, handsome guy doesn’t just have Steve’s voice, he also has Steve’s ability to see right through Bucky like he’s made of glass.

“I thought you’d be happy for me.” Now Steve’s voice sounds hurt, and Bucky turns instinctively towards it. It’s so weird, having to look up to watch Steve’s face screw up in what always he denies is a pout. “I don’t have to gasp for breath every ten steps anymore, for a start.”

“Yeah, and now you’re here getting shot at instead of being safe back at home,” Bucky replies. “You bet I’m real happy about that.”

“Excuse me for wanting to do something,” Steve retorts, and fuck, they’ve had this argument a dozen times before, even before Pearl Harbor. “And if I hadn’t you’d still be stuck in that Nazi factory, so stop complaining, punk.”

“Fuck.”

Bucky’s breath leaves him in a rush. The factory, the lab, the drugs and the Nazi doctors, and now he’s free. Free with Steve sitting by his side in a lumpy Army cot somewhere in fucking freezing war-torn Europe.

“Here.” Steve wraps a blanket around him, and rubs his back. “You’re shaking. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up with pneumonia like that time five years ago, it’s so cold.”

Bucky will be the first to admit he’s a proud son-of-a-happily-married-lady (well, second after Sister Helen from Sunday school), but it’s dark and cold and he’s exhausted. He’s not too proud to burrow into the warmth of Steve’s arm.

“Fuck,” Steve whispers, and he doesn’t swear often, and never in that small, broken voice. His arm tightens around Bucky with a strength that is going to take some getting used to (and a part of Bucky feels an illicit thrill at the thought). “Jerk. I thought I’d lost you. They sent me to see your unit and you weren’t there and…”

“And you got the brilliant idea to just charge alone into a fucking factory full of Nazis in the off-chance I hadn’t been turned into sausages already.”

“Shut up,” Steve says, choked up with both tears and appalled laughter. Bucky’s eyes are stinging, but he’s got his face hidden in Steve’s shoulder, so it doesn’t count. “You…”

“Hey.” Bucky’s instinct to calm Steve down is still working. “Hey, I’m fine. Bit banged up, whole lotta cold, but fine.”

Steve only hugs him all the tighter at this. Bucky’s bruises protest this treatment, but Bucky tells them to shut up. If Steve is now capable of breaking his ribs with a hug, he’ll take it and enjoy every minute of it.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Steve repeats. “I can’t do this without you, Buck.”

It feels like Bucky’s chest caves in at this. He’s come so close to death already, and he knows all it takes is one bullet, one false step, one slip…

“Course you can, pal.”

“No.” Steve draws back, and Bucky opens his mouth to argue because, in spite of what everyone in their neighbourhood says, Steve absolutely can make it without him. “Don’t call me that. We’re alone, aren’t we? Unless you…” Steve’s face falls and his hands (still scarred at the knuckles) drop to his lap. “I know it’s been months and I don’t look the same…”

Steve nearly slips off the cot when Bucky launches himself at him, and only his newfound strength and some strategic twisting stops them from ending up on the floor. Bucky would have never done this before (his hands always careful, so careful on Steve’s body, and still he left bruises on pale peach skin), but now he revels in the way Steve can hold him back, how he oh-so-easily turns so Bucky is on his back and kisses him until it’s Bucky who has to break the kiss to come up for air.

“Fuck,” Steve rasps, in that voice that goes straight to the more primal part of Bucky’s brain. “I missed you.”

“Same here,” says Bucky with a reckless laugh and wandering hands. “C’mon, let me see what they’ve done to you. Did you get bigger everywhere?”

“Jerk,” Steve mutters against his neck.

It’s only two hours later that they settle down. Bucky is perfectly warm now, Steve’s heavy arm is slung around his waist, and the Nazi factory and all that happened there seem like a bad dream. With a deep sigh, he closes his eyes and falls asleep.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts. He takes a deep, careful breath with the expectation of feeling the cold stab his lungs, and is surprised into a cough when the air is warm and humid instead.

“Careful there,” a woman’s voice says when he rolls to his side to avoid coughing.

_You’re slipping, Barnes._

“What?” Bucky asks, rolling again so he’s sitting up and his back is pressed against the wall. He looks around but he can’t find a weapon. The nightstand will probably work in a pinch.

The woman sitting in a chair by his bed just watches him. She’s young, almost a girl, with dark skin and braided hair and strange shiny clothes. Bucky takes note of the way she carries herself, head held high, no tension on her shoulders even if she’s alone with a very highly-trained soldier.

“Do you recognise me?” she asks.

Bucky shakes his head. She’s unarmed and he can’t see any bodyguards outside the door of the hut they are in. He still wishes he had a weapon, but if it comes to a fight he likes his odds.

“I’m Princess Shuri of Wakanda. You are Bucky Barnes, James Barnes, and you have been here with us recovering for quite a while. You’ve woken up a little bit disoriented today, that’s all. You’re not in any danger.”

Right.

“You’re a princess, huh?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Bit odd. Didn’t know I knew any royalty.”

She smiles.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Being interrogated,” Bucky answers pointedly.

“Alright.” She claps her hands. “You don’t want to answer any questions, that’s fine. How about I fill you in instead?”

So, with Bucky half-dressed and pressed against the wall like a cornered rat, the young princess launches into a tale of war and years past and what sounds a lot like magic even if she doesn’t use the word.

“Everything clear?” she asks after what feels like an hour.

Bucky wants to massage his temples, but at some point during the lecture he realised he only has one arm, and he doesn’t want to put himself in a vulnerable position even in front of this strange, eager young woman.

“That makes even less sense than what the… doctor said, before,” he says at last, when it’s clear that she’s awaiting an answer.

“Reality doesn’t have to make sense,” she tells him as if it were obvious. “It just is.”

Bucky lets out an exasperated breath.

“Don’t you see how fucked up… sorry, how messed up this is? You’re telling my best friend grows two feet and a hundred pounds of muscle, whisks me away from the Nazis, then the Soviets use me as some sort of puppet, and I end up in a magical kingdom in Africa with a princess looking after me?”

“You’re missing a few steps there, but yes, that’s basically it.”

“And this doesn’t…?” Bucky runs his one hand through his hair. “It doesn’t make sense. It can’t be real. It’s a million times more likely I’m just doped up and hallucinating in that lab, which is the last place I can for certain remember I was at. This pulp, superhero stuff doesn’t just happen to a guy from Brooklyn.”

“But it did! You have to believe me!”

Bucky feels his shoulders drop.

“Sorry, doll. If any of what you’ve told me is true, you mean well. It’s just safer this way.”

“Safer?” the princess asks with scorn. “What are you going to do, then? Even if you did go loony all the way back in World War II, what good is it going to do just to hide?! Say this is all a dream you’re having. Why not do cool stuff in it? Go out, learn to ride a rhino, make out with your hot boyfriend so he stops moping around!”

Bucky sputters.

“You’re not a coward,” she continues. “From what the stories say, you’ve never been one. Why start now?”

“So, what do you suggest? I go out and slay a dragon?”

“Dragons aren’t real, silly.” She rolls her eyes. “You don’t even have to do anything like fighting, if you don’t want to. But hiding away and refusing to move because you’re not sure this is real isn’t going to help.”

Bucky sighs.

“Let’s go eat something, at least. Anathi said she’d left your breakfast in the oven. You’ve not eaten since last night, you must starving and undoing all my hard work.”

Bucky is hungry, has been for a while, his stomach threatening to cave in like it did back in Brooklyn when he spent his money on medicine and fresh fruit for Steve and told him he’d already eaten.

“Alright,” he concedes. “Can I just… get dressed?”

And maybe find a weapon. Bucky knows himself, and he knows that he wouldn’t have spent more than a day in new lodgings without finding a way to secret away something sharp at least.

The princess agrees with another eye-roll, and tells him to hurry and that she’ll wait outside. Bucky throws on a colourful tunic anyhow over his sleep clothes, then carefully goes over the room. He finds a wickedly sharp knife in the third place he searches, the headboard of the bed, and secures it to his waistband, under the loose tunic. The slight weight and feel of the metal blade makes him feel better, and he goes out to join the princess in the sunny outside.

There may be no bodyguards, but Bucky can see that everyone in the village is keeping an eye on the princess and him as they go to another hut to eat. Paradoxically, this makes him feel better, that they still see him as a threat.

The food is delicious, and Princess Shuri keeps talking throughout the meal, showing off strange pieces of technology, referencing people and events Bucky has no idea about. He eats, back to the wall and eyes on the doorway, and listens to her with half an ear. The savoury food, the softness of the fabric of his tunic, the press of the knife at his waist, the smell of sun-warm adobe, the prickle of the wicker chair against his arm, it all feels as real as real can be.

“You seem to be rebooting, so to speak, when you wake up. Your mind resets in sleep, then has trouble clicking onto the right time period when you awake. I mean, no offense, but considering the times they’ve scrambled up your brain, it’s not surprising…” The princess is tapping at what she calls a ‘tablet’ and gesturing with a fork with a piece of yam skewered in it. “It’ll probably pass, I mean, you were fine a couple of days ago and it’s not like there has been a big event to trigger this or something. Maybe you should try to take a nap? Then I can see by myself.”

It’s been, even by the standards Bucky can remember, a very strange morning. A nap doesn’t sound bad.

Bucky manages to hide the knife under the pillow and clutches it while he closes his eyes, steadies his breathing, and tries to focus on the buzzing of insects and the sound of children’s laughter outside.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts. He’s alone.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

The grimy roof above doesn’t answer. The steel table he’s tied to leeches the warmth from his bones.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” he insists.

Time passes. Not even the noise from the factory can be heard here. Only water steadily dripping somewhere behind him, and the harsh sound of his breathing the frigid air.

There are no steps of guards outside, and there haven’t been any for a while. Once, Bucky was glad for the silence. He’s not so glad now.

Bucky wonders if they’ve left. If everyone’s left and they forgot him here. If he’ll die of dehydration and starvation tied to this table, and his body will be gnawed at by rats even before he’s completely gone.

He wants to scream, but he knows that if he’s not alone, calling attention to himself only means pain; and if he is alone, what is the point of screaming?

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

Someone will come for him, right? Even if it’s just the Nazi doctor that seemed so excited to pump him full of drugs. They’re not going to waste all the time they’ve spent experimenting on him by just leaving him behind like so much refuse, are they?

There’s a window on the wall to his left. Bucky can’t see anything but snow outside, can’t feel anything but the cold wind seeping through. The light outside dims. Night falls.

Still only the silence and the cold.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

Bucky is so hungry. He thinks of warm apple pie, of D-rations, of yam cooked in a salty broth. He licks his lips with a tongue that feels like a mouldy rag, and wishes a snowflake would land on his lips.

Nobody comes. He is alone. He will die here, and his body won’t be discovered God knows for how long. He wants to pray, but he has forgotten the words.

_Sorry, ma. Sorry, Rebecca. Sorry, Steve._

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

He can’t feel his hands, or his feet, or his left arm in its entirety, actually. He wishes he couldn’t feel his stomach curling in on itself, or his raw throat.

Bucky watches the door, hoping it will open. Even if it’s a Kraut come to put him out of his misery, he’ll welcome it. Even if it’s a Soviet… but why would it be a Soviet? They’re not this far through the Eastern Front yet. Maybe it will be an angel, come to lead him away from this sorry life that’s coming to an end. An angel, with Steve’s face and Steve’s voice, who will carry him away into a brighter world.

When dawn comes, he screams. His voice is a rough, broken thing, and it echoes against the concrete of the walls. Still, no one comes, not even to beat him into silence.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” he sobs. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

The cold wind whistles where it slips through the window. Otherwise, there’s silence.

Bucky closes his eyes and hopes he doesn’t wake up again.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts, but the pain is distant, as if had been wrapped in cotton and stored away.

“I think he’s awake,” a voice says.

“I think you’re a punk,” Bucky replies without opening his eyes.

“Jerk,” Steve replies. “How’re you feeling?”

“Fine.”

Bucky opens his eyes slowly. The light is bright and white. The air is cool and smells of stone. Steve is standing there, a white t-shirt making a poor job of trying to contain his bulging arms and his anxiety.

“Do you know…?”

“Wakanda,” Bucky answers immediately. “Back in the princess’ labs. 2018, though I must have lost a few days if they had time to call you and get you to come.”

Steve lets out a breath and nods.

“Correct on all counts. You scared us there for a bit.”

Bucky is not restrained. He sits up carefully. He’s barefoot, wearing soft pants and a white tank. They must have put him back in the freezer for a while after his freak out.

“Remind me to apologise to Doctor Ndlambe. And to… everyone back there, probably. Did I hurt anyone else other than Anathi’s nephew?”

Steve is shaking his head earnestly even before Bucky has finished his question.

“No, you were fine. I mean, you were kind of lost, but apparently you were very polite all the time.”

“Yeah, I bet. Where’s the princess?”

“She went to sleep. I told her I’d keep an eye on you.”

Steve sighs and takes a seat on the cot besides Bucky.

“You’re gonna be alright,” Steve tells him, reaching out to take Bucky’s hand. “Shuri has a new cybernetic arm ready for you when you’re ready.”

“You wanna give me a fancy new arm when you don’t know if I’ll panic and punch whoever is near next time I wake up?”

“You won’t.” And, before Bucky has time to open his mouth to protest, “And even if you do, I can take any punch you can throw at me, Buck.”

Bucky shakes his head.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Steve insists. “I was an idiot to listen to you. You were with me all the times I was sick, every time I got into a fight. You nursed me that time I got pneumonia, remember, even when the doctor shook his head at us. I can be here for you while you deal with this.”

“And if it doesn’t get better?”

“Then it doesn’t. We’ll figure out a way to remind you of where and when you are. Maybe a note on the nightstand, or something. We’ll work something out.”

Bucky looks away. His eyes are stinging, and his hand is holding Steve’s like he couldn’t that time on the train in Austria.

“This is stupid,” he says.

“You are stupid,” Steve replies, and the tone of his voice makes those words into anything but an insult. “Come on, they gave me a guest room upstairs. We can see Shuri in the morning.”

Once they’re safely ensconced in the guest room and Steve is getting ready to sleep, Bucky sits on the bed and wonders if he’ll ever go to sleep again without fearing where he’ll be when he wakes up. His dreams are so realistic, so detailed, he wishes there was a way to tell them apart from reality. He can’t even rely on Steve’s presence to work as a constant, because he’s dreamt of Steve before.

“We’ll figure it out,” Steve says, as always reading Bucky clearer than a book. “Promise. C’mon, you can’t just stay awake the rest of your life.”

Bucky tries to resist the temptation of the soft bed and the painkillers and the warmth of Steve holding him close. He makes himself remember painful things, of which he’s in no short supply, and retrace steps he’d rather have forgotten. He closes his one good hand into a fist, but relaxes it when Steve unconsciously seems to detect the movement and start to wake up. He keeps his eyes stubbornly open in the darkness, until he sees bright lights where he knows there are none.

He falls asleep.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts.

He’s alone. The grimy concrete ceiling mocks him.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

Silence answers him. No one’s near. How long has it been? Days, at least. His lips are cracked and bleeding. He stopped feeling hungry some time ago. What he can see of his toes is black and swollen.

He’s dying. Why is he still awake?

He closes his eyes.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts. Steve’s arm is as heavy as fucking concrete, and Bucky’s one good arm has fallen asleep and it now prickling all over. He huffs and turns around. He can’t hold Steve with no left arm, but he can use his legs to wrap himself around him quite competently, thank you.

“… Buck?” Steve asks as he’s manhandled into a better position.

“Wakanda, 2018, why are you so fucking heavy? Go back to sleep.”

“You are heavy,” Steve answers, but his eyes are already closing again. God knows how much time he’s spent awake after he got the call about Bucky, the idiot. The least Bucky can do is hold him close and listen to his slow, steady breathing.

They’ll figure it out.

.

.

.

Bucky wakes up.

It hurts.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.”

Silence.

.

.

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**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and remember: feedback makes happy authors!


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